What I am interested in is if you had to spend your money now for a solution that needs to be up 24*7 for the next ten years (and where technology is not the deciding factor), who would you choose and why?

I think based on the application i would select. Supposing the uptime and the period are the key elements in your question, I would considder the support for the used products over that period important, as well as the available skills for those products. Secondly, as above, I would not push a different technology if current staff is supposed to support the system unless the system is so large/important it deserves it's own staff for years to come.